1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to data processing and, in particular to rendering electronic mail attachments.
2. Background Information
With advances in integrated circuit, microprocessor, networking and communication technologies, an increasing number of devices, in particular, digital computing devices, are being interconnected together. This increased interconnectivity of computing devices has laid the groundwork for a communication infrastructure particularly well-suited for enabling electronic communications between such computing devices. More specifically, the increased interconnectivity of computing devices has led to the adoption of electronic mail (email) as a near ubiquitous mode of communication.
In the past, email applications were limited to facilitating the exchange of text-based messages between a relatively small populous of individuals. Over time, however, email applications and associated communications protocols have become increasingly sophisticated enabling more complex messages to be exchanged between widespread groups of individuals. For example, in addition to enabling the exchange of text-messages, many modern day email applications additionally enable users to exchange binary files. These files (often referred to as attachments) are typically encoded within an email message (using e.g. an encoding scheme such as Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), Uuencode, BinHex and so forth) before the message is transmitted to the designated recipient(s). Upon receipt of the encoded email message, the recipient's email application decodes the message and extracts the binary attachment. Once the attachment is “detached” from the message, the recipient is able to save the attachment onto a storage medium such as a hard drive or floppy disk, or view the attachment on a display device assuming the recipient's client device is equipped with the appropriate software.
In the past, recipients of a binary file were required to have a copy of the source application used to generate the binary file installed on their client device if they wanted to view the binary attachment. Unfortunately, however, such source applications are typically packaged and sold as part of expensive productivity suites that are unaffordable to many individuals. Because a sender could not always guarantee that a given recipient would have a copy of the source application installed on their client device, application-specific viewers were developed. These application-specific viewers were typically distributed free of charge and provided users with the minimum functionality required to enable users to view documents of a particular proprietary format. Unfortunately, however, the existence and location of these viewers was not always readily ascertainable, and it was often the recipient's responsibility to locate and download the application specific viewer as needed. Depending upon the recipient's Internet accessibility, this could take a long time thereby frustrating the near immediate gratification typically afforded by email.
Furthermore, with the introduction of web-based email clients, individuals are able to access their email at nearly any location around the world so long as a web connection is available. For example, it is not uncommon for business travelers to use hotel-supplied web clients to access their respective email accounts. In order for the business traveler to view a proprietary attachment, however, the associated source application would need to be installed on the client device that is being used by the traveler to access the respective email account. This however, is not always possible or practical.